Yeah. About seven or eight years ago I was
approached by--I forget who--to join Brookings and to-it was
never quite clear as to exactly what they wanted me to do,
but they ended up by saying, “Would you be chairman of the
executive committee.” I learned later that what they really
wanted me to do was to be chairman of Brookings and take Bob
Roosa's place. But nobody had gotten around to telling Bob
Roosa this.

Q:

Why did they want to get rid of Bob Roosa?

Heiskell:

Because Brookings was in trouble and they felt it
needed more leadership. And Bob Roosa and the president of
Brookings, Bruce McLaury, were two of a stripe. They were
non promotional, non sales minded types.

Q:

More intellectual?

Heiskell:

Yeah. The president was perfectly good and Bob
Roosa was a perfectly good economist, but when it came to
running an organization with a budget of twelve million
dollars and going around raising the kind of money that you
needed, he wasn't there to do it. But as I said, nobody
told Bob Roosa. So I ended up as chairman of the executive
committee and tried to have some impact on how to organize